The Linguist

FEATURES 18 The Linguist Vol/64 No/4 ciol.org.uk/thelinguist Why Nassim Barakat began learning Syriac, a dialect spoken I must have been 12 years old the first time I saw my grandpa write Karshouni. It was perplexing. The letters looked nothing like Arabic, yet that is the language he was writing. These were the letters I saw in church every Sunday, alongside Arabic translations, while growing up in the small mountain town of Ehmej in Lebanon. Karshouni refers to Arabic texts written in Syriac letters, following the spelling habits of Syriac – a bit like Arabizi today, where the Latin alphabet is used to write Arabic on social media. That was my first exposure to Syriac as a language not only confined to the walls of Our Lady of the Rock. Back then I did not yet know that languages come in families and in groups. To my child mind, my grandfather was doing something slightly weird: speaking and writing in tongues. I believe that moment is where my curiosity for languages began, the kind of curiosity that lingers beyond school tests and turns into a lifelong habit. For over a thousand years, Syriac was a living cultural language across vast areas of the Near East. Theologians, traders, physicians and poets wrote in Syriac. The language served as a vehicle for theology and philosophy, and for the translation of Greek science into the languages of the Middle East. Over centuries, its script and its literary forms became markers of identity for communities living on the fault lines of empire and migration. Today, there are two ways Syriac survives. One is as a living vernacular in a handful of communities, spoken at home and in the street in parts of Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Armenia and Iran, and among diasporas in Europe, Australia and North America. The other is as a liturgical language. Alive in church services, hymns and ritual texts, it is part of the identity of millions of Christians in the Middle East within the Eastern rite churches. This dual existence is what makes Syriac so compelling, and so fragile. A prayer chanted in a 600- year-old vaulted church can make an entire congregation feel the weight of centuries without the need to translate every phrase. At the same time, in day-to-day life the language has retreated. War, forced migration and the relentless sweep of dominant national languages have pushed Syriac out of markets and schools. Families who once spoke it at home often switch to Arabic, Kurdish or Turkish with their children. Speakers left behind in villages tell stories of empty rooms and silent kitchens where the old language once echoed. For me, Syriac has always been an expression of home. A feeling of calm engulfs me when I listen to Syriac hymns. I remember once, in Abu Dhabi, feeling homesick and going to the Catholic cathedral near my work. Mass was celebrated in Lebanese Arabic but following the Latin rite. I could not pray. I did not recognise anything and felt disoriented. To me, prayer is done in a mixture of Arabic and Syriac. My mind was unable to disassociate the prayer – the meaning of the prayer – from its form. It was strange to realise that praying on its own was not what made me comfortable; it was the mixture of languages that resuscitated the feeling of being home while abroad. THE PULL OF HOME A SENSE OF BELONGING The Rock of Raouché, Beirut (main image); and Nassim's home town, Ehmej, in Keserwan-Jbeil (above) © SHUTTERSTOCK

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